Against The Heavens

The dark-yellow sand beneath him was so soft it almost acted like water, making it hard to maintain his footing unless he made sure to constantly move his feet. There were several pillar-like cacti spread through the area, long and thin needles covering their surfaces. Other than these cacti, the only other plants that existed in abundance were a type of round bush that had strangely brown leaves that were completely flat and round, the edges appearing somewhat sharp. Li Yang swept his surroundings with a curious gaze, muttering to himself.

"Now then, just where are we going to meet up?"

The last message he had gotten from Fang Ying didn"t contain a very descriptive mentioning of where they were to meet, it only said "Down by the river, where the ocean meets the sky." He was currently standing in a desert, just about as far from an ocean as he could get. After giving his surroundings a few more sweeps, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered to himself once again.

"Let"s see if we can"t find anyone else first, they might know a bit more about the layout of this place than me."

He had been fully focused on his cultivation recently, so he hadn"t prepared as much information about this place as he should have, he could only hope that someone else had prepared more thoroughly than he had. He closed his eyes and sent his Qi into the surroundings, taking this chance to also test out his new scouting technique.

His new scouting technique was an improvement of his old one, which discovered living beings by having his lightning resonate with the electricity in their body. This new one mixed in his law of ice and fire as well, allowing it to also detect places where the temperature was slightly different. This meant that even if someone concealed the electricity in their body, he could still discover them thanks to the fact that their body wasn"t the exact same temperature as their surroundings.

Since he was in a desert, there were plenty of heat sources around him that he discovered, but he simply filtered them out one by one, focusing on the places that were somewhat colder than their surroundings. Coupled with his lightning, he was able to discover that this desert was actually home to quite a wide variety of Demonic beasts, some large and some small. Most of them were hiding beneath the sand, lying in ambush for any living being that might move close enough.

Li Yang ignored these Demonic beasts for now, killing them could earn him points, but he was more interested in finding Fang Ying. He slowly increased the range of his scouting technique, scouring more and more of the desert in search of people. After increasing the range of his scouting technique to around 25 kilometers in each direction, he finally discovered other people, a small group of four people.

Li Yang narrowed down the range of his scouting technique, locking on to this group of four people. Their cultivations were all in the middle stage of the Ascending Heaven realm, so it was clear that they had grouped together because they were worried that someone would attack them due to their rather low cultivation. This cultivation allowed anyone beneath the Primordial Rune realm to take part, so Li Yang guessed that it was fairly common for weaker cultivators to gather up in groups.

Li Yang guessed that it wasn"t a coincidence that he had ended up so close to someone who had cultivation so similar to his. The Huo clan said that they sent people to random places in the outskirt, albeit a bit away from the compet.i.tors from the clans, but that was probably a lie.

After all, if a bunch of Ascended Heaven realm cultivators ended up arriving close to an Immortal Rebirth realm cultivator, they would all be taken out instantly. The Huo clan probably wanted the compet.i.tion to be a bit more exciting than that, so they probably sent people to the various places based on their cultivation. Of course, these were all just Li Yang"s guesses, he had no way of actually knowing if they were right or not.

After locking on to the group of four, Li Yang wasted no time in stepping forward and turning into a blur as he dashed, leaving a trail of lightning in his wake. None of the Demonic beasts that were lying in ambush were able to react in time as he dashed past them, they could only look on as he vanished from sight.

The group of four, which consisted of one woman and three men, were able to hear Li Yang approach thanks to the subdued sound of thunder. But by the time they heard the sound and realized that something was approaching them, he had already arrived in front of them. They hurriedly stepped back and drew their weapons, but Li Yang simply swept them with a nonchalant glance.

"You wouldn"t happen to have a map of this hidden realm? I"m looking for a place that fits this description, Down by the river, where the ocean meets the sky."

He felt like he was polite enough with his question, but the four people didn"t seem too interested in answering him, looking at him with tense expressions. The one who seemed to be the leader of the group, a somewhat lanky man with a bald head and a goatee, whispered a quick order to the three others and then dashed forward and tried to deliver an overhead slash with his shortsword.

The three others also moved at the same time, the woman stepping back a bit more and waving her hand, causing the sand beneath Li Yang to rise up like tendrils, coiling around his body and trying to drag him down. The two others dashed forward, heading to different sides of Li Yang in a pincer attack. Li Yang could only let out a sigh and give a light shake of his head. He had been in a good mood, so he wanted to resolve this without using violence. But since they clearly didn"t want that, he could only oblige them.

A horrifying heat spread out from his body, the sand coiling around him melting and dripping down his body. The sand beneath the woman in the back, as well as the sand beneath the two that were trying to catch him in a pincer attack, melted thanks to an influx of high heat, the feet of the three people sinking into the molten sand. The heat was enough to completely fry their feet, their bones cracking due to the heat as they screamed in agony.

The moment they cried out, the molten sand became icy cold and froze, turning into murky gla.s.s that trapped their roasted feet and prevented them from moving. At the same time as Li Yang did this, he also stepped forward and faced the attack of the leader.

He stretched out his arm and grabbed onto the sword of the leader, crushing it between the fingers on his left hand and punching out with his right arm. His fist made contact with the man"s chest, causing it to shatter and cave in, the fragments of his ribs just barely missing his lungs and heart. The man vomited out large amounts of blood and flew back, only stopping when he crashed into the woman, who was doing her best to stifle her screams of pain.

Li Yang looked at his hands, very pleased with how things had gone. He had used his Qi to deal with the woman and the two other men, but against the leader, he had only used his Dark Star Essence, the body equivalent of Qi, and the strength of his body. It was the sheer might and weight of the Dark Star Essence that let him grab and easily crush the sword with one hand.

Now, even if he used just his body or his soul cultivation, he would be able to beat other cultivators at the middle stage of the Ascended Heaven realm, his strength had indeed grown quite a bit over these last eight months. Li Yang moved his gaze away from his hands, casting it onto the leader, who was struggling to sit up.

"Are you an idiot? I was able to approach all of you before you even got the chance to properly react, what made you think that you had even the slightest chance of beating me? Now answer my question, do you have a map or know about the place I"m looking for?"

Even if Li Yang had been weaker than them, the sheer advantage his speed gave him would make it so that there was nothing they could do to him. They should have attempted fleeing the moment they saw him, trying to fight him was the same as committing suicide. The leader got some help from the woman behind him, who still had her roasted feet trapped in the gla.s.s, just barely managing to sit up and lean against the woman. He spat out more blood, glaring at Li Yang.

"Why the f.u.c.k should we give you anything? You"ll get nothing from us, just kill us and get it over with!"

The three others winced slightly at his words, especially the woman, but there was nothing they could say, their lives were in the hands of Li Yang. As for Li Yang, he looked at the b.l.o.o.d.y leader as if he was an idiot, slowly walking forward.

"You really are an idiot. You make it sound like I won"t get what I"m looking for if I kill you, but are you so dumb that you can"t even realize that me killing you means that I will acquire everything you have on you, meaning that I can easily check if you have a map. Killing you would be the easier option, you are only alive right now because I"m in a fantastic mood because I soon get to see my wife again. Now answer my questions before my patience runs out."

The leader turned a little pale after having the truth stated to him so simply. He looked at the three others, who were just as pale as him, mostly because of the pain of having their feet roasted in molten sand. He grit his teeth and continued to glare at Li Yang, letting out a defiant laugh.

"I know a place like the one you are looking for, but as it isn"t properly marked on the maps you"ll never get to hear about it if you kill us. Promise me that you"ll protect us for one year and then I"ll tell you about the place and how to get there."

The man"s thoughts were racing faster than they ever had before. It might be risky to ask this of Li Yang, but he could see that Li Yang was very anxious to find this place, so he hoped that he might be able to profit a bit from this. If they could be protected by Li Yang for an entire year, they would be able to enter quite a few places they otherwise wouldn"t dare enter. But sadly for him, he had picked the wrong target. Li Yang"s expression didn"t change much, he simply crouched down in front of the man, glancing at him and the three others.

"You know, about five kilometers to the east of here, there is a small group of Demonic beasts hiding under the sand. If I"m not wrong, they should be Frozen Mind Scorpions. Nasty little things, they paralyze the bodies of other Demonic beasts and people, planting their eggs inside the frozen yet conscious people. Since the people are only paralyzed, their bodies stay nice and fresh for when the eggs hatch, allowing the babies to eat a nice meal right after being born. The body is also only paralyzed, not numbed, so you feel every little thing as you are slowly eaten alive. A gruesome way to go really, used to be a torture method long in the past, I"m not sure if its still in use."

Li Yang cast a nonchalant glance to the east as he spoke, pointing at a spot beneath one of the round bushes where the sand was a bit lower than the surroundings. The four people turned so pale that it looked like all blood had vanished from their bodies, their limbs trembling uncontrollably. Li Yang raised his eyes slightly, using his eyebrows to beckon towards the woman behind the man as he continued to talk.

"You have 30 seconds to hand me the map and tell me the information I want to know. If you do the smart thing, I"ll hand you some pills so that the four of you can heal up quickly. But refuse, or stay silent for too long, and I will start bringing your companions over to the scorpions. I"ll do it one by one, forcing you to watch as the eggs are implanted in their bodies and they are eaten alive. You seem rather close to this woman, so how about we start with her? Or would you prefer I save her for last?"

Li Yang"s voice was as cold as the wind of the netherworld as he spoke, showing the man that this was no joke. Li Yang was far from a good man, he was selfish and could be very cruel and evil, only when he was with Fang Ying could be he considered a decent man. The man continued to hesitate slightly, seemingly unsure if he could trust Li Yang"s words. But he quickly changed his tune when Li Yang stood up and reached out to grab onto the woman.

"Wait! Wait! I"ll talk! I"ll talk!"

Li Yang stopped reaching out with his arm, casting a downwards glance at the man, who scrambled to take something out from his interspatial ring. He took out a thumb-sized slip of orange jade, handing it to Li Yang as hastily spoke out.

"Map! It"s a map! It shows most of this hidden realm, every inch that my Crow"s Nest sect has mapped in the past! The place you are talking about sounds like the Cloud G.o.d"s Garden, a floating continent located very close to the center of the hidden realm! It has a long river that one can follow to reach an ocean that stretches out to the very edge of the floating continent! Rumors have it that if one stands on the largest island in that ocean, the scene looks like the ocean is touching the sky, the two melting together into one!"

Li Yang accepted the jade slip and sank his mind into it, inspecting the contents. While he was doing this, one of the men that had his feet trapped in gla.s.s, slowly drew back his arms, preparing to throw his spear. But just as he started pulling back his arms, he felt something shock his mind. It felt like someone had hit him in the head with a hammer and shattered his mind. His thoughts were thrown into disarray as he violently vomited, unable to keep anything in his stomach.

Li Yang cast a sideways glance at him and pulled back the Vital Essence, the soul equivalent of Qi, that he had tossed at the man to shock his soul. He continued to check the contents of the jade slip, which contained a surprisingly detailed map of this hidden realm. It seemed like this Crow"s Nest sect had a somewhat close relationship with the Huo clan, being able to enter this place so many times that they could create a map like this.

Li Yang spotted the place the man had talked about, a ma.s.sive continent floating in the air close to the center of this hidden realm. Unless one was able to fly, they had to head to the city below the continent, Cloud King city, and use a special array there to head up to the continent. Li Yang put the jade slip into his interspatial ring and took out a vial filled with a few good pills. He placed the vial in front of the man and then left, turning into a blur as he dashed away. Now that he had a clue as to where he should go, he didn"t want to waste any more time here.